Quotes from Margaret Atwood

To go through all that and give birth to a shredder: it wasn't a fine thought. We didn't know exactly what would happen to the babies that didn't get passed, that were declared Unbabies. But we knew they were put somewhere, quickly, away.

The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. He

It would be nice to believe that love should be dished out in a fair way so that everyone got some. But that wasn't how it was going to be for me.

She takes after Laura in that respect: the same tendency towards absolutism, the same refusal to compromise, the same scorn for the grosser human failings. To get away with that, you have to be beautiful. Otherwise it seems mere peevishness.

Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated.

He was not a monster, to her ... How easy to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.

Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.

And if I talk to him, I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself.

I say, leave me alone, this is my winter, I will stay here if I choose.

We dangle by a flimsy thread, Our little lives are grains of sand: The Cosmos is a tiny sphere Held in the hollow of God's hand. Give up your anger and your spite, And imitate the Deer, the Tree; In sweet Forgiveness find your joy, For it alone can set you free.

His head is a little below mine, so that when he looks up at me it's at a juvenile angle. It must amuse him, this fake subservience. (...) The problem wasn't only the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them any more. (...) That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for. (...)

Why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that's happened to me since that day, I understand why. You hold it in, whatever it is, until you can make it through the worst part. Then, once you're safe, you can cry all the tears you couldn't waste time crying before.